Saturday, January 26, 2013

Blogathon 30: Uncanny X-Force (Kaitlin Tremblay Guest Post)

Right from the get-go, Uncanny
X-Force had everything I loved: a team of hired guns, which included
Psylocke and Deadpool, taking care of dirty work incognito. And it was this
team, and Remender's ability to create an ensemble cast where no character felt
tacked on or left out, that ultimately hooked me. Each member brought their own
unique strength and provided something to the story nobody else could --
whether it was Pyslocke’s compassion/telekenesis holding the team together,
Logan’s battle-weary wisdom leading them on, Deadpool’s sheer insanity saving
them from situations a sane man would run from, Angel’s psychosis testing their
limits and Fantomex’s bravado threatening to break them apart. They worked as a
team and moved as a team, and even when the story got a little too wacky --
which, oh boy, it did -- watching X-Force play together was always worth the
read.

Despite all that, ultimately,
Uncanny X-Force reads more as Pyslocke’s, or at least the Psylocke we’ve
known so far, swan song -- a sort death with the ultimate hope of a rebirth for
Betsy Braddock. We start off with a fairly recognizable, traditional,
none-too-complicated Betsy: her unapologetic ass-kicking and her loving
relationship with Warren. After The Dark Angel Saga, Betsy undergoes a
series of events that are ultimately about redefining her: her mind becomes
shattered; emotionally, she becomes wiped clean; she severs her relationship
with her brothers and family in Otherworld; she sees a future version of
herself as a Minority Report-esque fascist leader, killing people before they
can commit murder in a world ruined by Apocalypse; she tries to kill herself to
prevent this future; and after all of it, her mind becomes potentially
irrevocably shattered in the final battle to prevent Evan from turning into the
evil Apocalypse Take Two.

Everything contained within Uncanny
X-Force is a steady loss of what is important to her, and her frenzied,
chaotic and disastrous attempts to reconcile these events with her life. She
gives up her ability to feel in order save Fantomex after killing her brother.
After the horrid experiences with Angel, this is the next big step in her
downward spiral. So much of Uncanny X-Force is Betsy fighting and
jumping between extremes of what she feels is right and what she feels she
needs to do. At the end of issue 28, when she sees herself in the future, she
justifies her suicide attempt by saying "If I am the woman who brings this
all about -- I'll kill her before she can." Her disassociation from
herself in this scene points to the splitting that has occurred within her
mind: there is the Psylocke she sees she will become, and the Psylocke she
currently is, and both are wedged into her body in this moment, a moment that
has been building for the entirety of the Uncanny X-Force run.

Betsy is steadily losing
everyone and everything. She loses Jamie, and because of that, she also loses
Otherworld. She loses Warren, she loses Fantomex. She loses her ability to
feel, her ability to think properly in her own mind. By the end of issue 36,
she even loses the ability to tell what is real and what is fantasy, as
Fantomex points out to her on the final page. But the crucial part of this loss
and descent is that it is paving the way for a creation of a new Psylocke. Uncanny
X-Force ends with Betsy's assertion that, even if this is all in her head a
la a Nolan movie, then at least she's going to take control and make it
something meaningful for herself.

Ultimately, then, I would say
Uncanny X-Force is the stage where Betsy Braddock’s life and identity
plays out like a tragedy in order to take Psylocke’s character in a newer
direction.With the MarvelNOW! Uncanny
X-Force run beginning including Spiral, the character who forged Betsy’s
mind into Kwannon’s body, all signs appear to point to a refiguring of Betsy’s
identity and characterization.

[Don't forget to donate what you can to the Hero Initiative (Details in this post)! After you do, let me know via comment or e-mail (found at the righthand side) so I can keep track of donations -- and who to thank.]

About

Chad Nevett has a BA in English and political science, and an MA in English Language & Literature--Creative Writing. He was a reviewer for Comic Book Resources, blogger for Comics Should be Good, and writer for 411mania. He resides in Windsor, Ontario with his wife and her cat. He can be reached at chevett13[at]yahoo[dot]ca.